BAGHDAD (Dispatches) – Three bomb attacks have struck several areas across Iraq, leaving nearly two dozen people dead and 46 more wounded.
A car bomb exploded on Sunday near a checkpoint in the town of Khalis, located roughly 15 kilometers northeast of Baqubah, Diyala’s provincial capital.
The blast claimed the lives of nine people and injured 20 others, among them security forces.
Meanwhile, the Arabic-language al-Sumaria television network reported that the explosion led to the closure of the road connecting the cities of Kirkuk and Baghdad.
Another car bomb explosion ripped through central Baghdad, killing six people and wounding at least 13 more.
A third bombing also took place near a restaurant on Baghdad’s Saadon Street, where six people lost their lives and 13 others sustained injuries.
No group or individual has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but they bear the hallmark of the Daesh terrorist group that has been leading a campaign of death and destruction in Iraq over the past few years.
Daesh has recently increased its terrorist activities across Iraq in revenge for the blows it has been suffering at the hands of Iraqi forces, particularly in the northern city of Mosul.
Iraqi army soldiers and allied fighters launched the Mosul liberation operation on October 17, 2016, and since then they have made major gains against terrorists.
Iraqi army forces achieved a string of swift territorial gains in and around Mosul on Saturday as they were joined by allied fighters and Kurdish Peshmerga forces in a multi-pronged operation to push Daesh terrorists out of their last urban stronghold in the country.
Commander of Nineveh Liberation Operation, Lieutenant General Abdul Amir Yarallah, said troops from the 9th Armored Division and Commando Regiment retook the village of al-Shamsiyat on Saturday afternoon, and hoisted the Iraqi national flag over a cluster of buildings there, Arabic-language al-Sumaria television network reported.
The commander stated that the development meant that the 9th Armored Division had completed the liberation of all villages and areas south of the eastern side of Mosul.
A local source, requesting not to be named, also said tens of Daesh terrorists had been killed in an internal dispute as the terror group loses ground at the same time that Iraqi forces advance east of Mosul.
The source said dozens of Daesh terrorists fled their positions in several residential neighborhoods of eastern Mosul, and crossed the Tigris River on Saturday to take refuge in the western quarter.